BARRY SHEENE
Half a century ago, in September 1970, Barry Sheene began his Grand Prix adventure. Here, for the first time, is the full story of his first big step towards superstardom
The full story behind his move into the GP world might surprise you...
Barry Sheene very nearly didn’t become a motorcycle racer. When he was a teenager he was happiest with a spanner in his hand. By the time he was 14 he was already on the Grand Prix trail, bunking off school to join the Continental Circus, fettling a Matchless G50 and AJS 7R for American privateer Tony Woodman.
“The pull of racing was never strong in those days,” he wrote in his 1977 autobiography The Story So Far... “Contentment for me was simply to make ready or put right interesting motorcycles.”
Sheene spent much of his youth tinkering with bikes in his dad’s workshop, which came with Frank’s job as maintenance man at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Frank had raced Nortons at Brooklands in the 1930s, and Norton, BSA, Douglas and AJS machines on the Isle of Man in the 1950s, before going two-stroke – first with Italian Itoms, then Bultacos.
Sheene had his first go on a track at 15, illegally, of course. The historic event was at Brands Hatch, where he ran-in his dad’s Bultacos and Dave Croxford’s Matchless. “We used to go down to Brands in my yellow E-type Jag, with my G50 on a trailer,” remembers Croxford, who won four British championships in the 1960s. “It was four quid a session, so I’d pay the money and Barry would put my lid on and run the bikes in for me. The G50 was a bit alien to him after a Bultaco, but he was only running it in.”
Sheene started racing at 17, but he only lasted a couple of meetings before he put away his pudding-basin helmet and took another job in the Grand Prix pitlane, looking after the Bultacos of British privateer Lewis Young.
“I wasn’t entirely sure racing was for me,” he wrote. “To help out dad with his bikes was one thing. Battling for honours at frightening speeds was another.”
Sheene had a ball during his second summer with the Continental Circus. He learned how to fix bikes far
from home, he learned how to live an itinerate lifestyle and he learned how to become a world-class Lothario.
By the time he returned home in the autumn of 1968, he knew what he wanted to do with his life, and he was already getting cocky: “In my heart, I knew I could do better than some of the blokes I had seen touring around in the GPS.”
Sheene had talent, no doubt. He also had his dad Frank, who knew pretty much everything there was to know about two-strokes and had struck up an unlikely friendship with Don Paco Bultó, the founder of Bultaco who had fought with General Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
Bultó equipped the Sheene family with new bikes each spring, which Frank tuned in his workshop. He soon became Britain’s go-to Bultaco tuner.
“The workshop was in the boiler room down in the basement,” adds Croxford, a regular visitor. “It was a big room, where Frank could do a bit of machining and that. It was more of a race shop than a hospital boiler room! “Barry would be down there on the phone to Bultaco, saying: ‘I had a couple more wins last weekend, Mr Bultó, have you got any spares? Have you got any of this or any of that?’ Him and his dad were always on the scrounge.” The set-up in Queen’s Square, WC1, was as good as it got in those days. Frank made a tidy living on the side tuning
Bultacos and at the same time he taught Barry how to get the best out of a two-stroke.
All of this played an important role in Sheene’s career, starting with his stellar debut season in 1969. He was the new kid on the block, chasing home Chas Mortimer in the 125cc British Championship. However, there were still doubts, for a while at least. The death of Bill Ivy during July’s East German GP affected Sheene deeply – Ivy had made his name on Frank’s Bultacos and was a close friend of the family.
The following year, Sheene dominated the championship on his Bultaco. Arguably the turning point in his career came midway through that summer.
“We heard something special was going to become available,” he wrote. “This machine was going to transform my career, pitch me into the big time and generally help to make me a racing star.”
Former Honda and Suzuki factory rider Stuart Graham was selling his Suzuki 125. This was no ordinary 125 – it was a full-factory, twin-cylinder, rotary-valve, 10-speed RT67 GP which the rider from Cheshire had ridden to third place in the 1967 125cc World Championship behind factory Yamaha duo Bill Ivy and Phil Read.
Graham was gifted the bike when Suzuki and Honda quit GP racing shortly before the start of the 1968 season. Both factories compensated their contracted riders by allowing them to keep their 1967 factory bikes to race in ’68, as long as they didn’t compete in GPS.
Mike Hailwood had a Honda 250 six, Ralph Bryans had a 125 five and Graham and Suzuki team-mate Hans Georg Anscheidt had 125 twins, which they rode in lucrative nonworld championship meetings.
But by 1970, Graham was ready to retire from motorcycle racing. He rode his RT67 for the last time at the North West 200 in May 1970.
“I’d started my little garage business, so I had other priorities,” says Graham. “I contacted Suzuki in Japan and asked them when they wanted the bike back. I wasn’t getting any response and eventually they told me they didn’t want it back – said: ‘You can do what you like with it’. I decided to sell it.”
Anscheidt had already sold his RT67 to fellow German Dieter Braun, who was using the bike to dominate the 1970 125 World Championship. The water-cooled twin made six more horsepower than a humble air-cooled Bultaco, so when the Sheenes heard Graham was selling his RT they
knew they had to have it, even if the £2000 asking price was more than they could afford, and even if the bike was three years old and short of spare parts.
“Those bikes were a challenge to run and I knew that if anyone could make the thing go it was Frank, who was a very good two-stroke engineer,” Graham adds. “And I knew if anyone could make something of the bike it was Barry, because he was very much the up-and-coming guy. He obviously had the talent, so I saw it as a combination of Frank and Barry. There was no one else in their league to make the most of the bike.”
“When they came up to collect the bike and a spare engine it was obvious they were putting every penny they’d got, and a bit more, into getting hold of this bike. I could’ve been a lot harder on the money, but I was keen that it went to a good home. The factory said there were no more spare parts, so Frank had to make do with what they got. When it came to replacing crank seals and other bits and pieces Frank had ways of modifying bits and getting things sorted.”
After loading the RT67 into their tatty Ford Thames van, the Sheenes’ first stop on the drive home was Mallory Park for the Post-tt meeting. The opposition was intense, including Braun on his RT67 and 1969 125cc World Champion Dave Simmonds, riding an ex-factory Kawasaki twin, not dissimilar to the Suzuki.
“Because of plug-oiling problems I’d only been able to do five laps in practice,” Sheene recalled. “I started reasonably well, but Simmonds buzzed past me. Gradually I got the hang of the Suzuki and my plan was to take Dave three laps from home. The plot went just right and as I hurtled out of Devil’s Elbow towards the finish flag I could hardly contain my delight.”
That same day, Sheene had one of his first outings on
‘THIS MACHINE WAS GOING TO TRANSFORM MY CAREER, PITCH ME INTO THE BIG TIME, AND GENERALLY HELP MAKE ME A RACING STAR’
a big bike – the polar opposite of a 125, a Seeley-framed Norton Commando belonging to south London dealers Gus Kuhn, who were good friends with the Sheene family. The race was forgettable, but there was a purpose to it which would soon become apparent.
After Mallory, the RT67 was mostly kept in the workshop, while Sheene reverted to the Bultaco single to clinch the British 125 title. The plan was to save the twin for bigger things, starting with Barry’s Grand Prix debut at the seasonending Spanish GP in Barcelona.
“The shock in some quarters that I was brazen enough to try my luck in the highest standard of racing after less than two full seasons in Britain was understandable. But you’ve got to keep moving if you want to get somewhere in racing, so I considered there was no time like the present.”
In early July, Sheene prepared for his GP debut by travelling to Barcelona with Gus Kuhn to contest the Montjuic 24 Hours, which would teach him the secrets of the circuit that twists and turns through wooded parkland above Barcelona’s harbour. Sheene shared a Commando with Pat Mahoney, a regular Gus Kuhn rider. Incredibly, the pair led the race after 12 hours, but lost the lead after a long pit stop and quit after 15 hours when the gearbox packed up.
Two months later, Frank, mum Iris, mechanic Don Mackay, Barry and girlfriend Lesley Shepherd crammed into the Thames van, along with the RT67, a Bultaco TSS125 and Bultaco’s new 360, powered by an El Bandido motocross engine. Ahead lay a gruelling journey from London to Jerez, in Spain’s far south west – 1500 miles through France and Spain, Franco-era roads and all.
Sheene had entered two non-championship meetings in Spain – to earn some money, because world championship
events always paid very little – one before the Barcelona GP, the other after. First came the Trofeo de la Merced race (named after Spain’s Mercedarian monks and sponsored by Tio Pepe sherry) around a 1.5-mile triangular street circuit in the suburbs of motorcycle-mad Jerez.
His main rival was Ángel Nieto, riding a factory Derbi. Nieto had just won the 50cc world title for the second consecutive year, so the local hero and his fans were looking forward to a nice, easy cruise to victory.
Much to their astonishment, Sheene ran away with the race. After all, Nieto’s six-speed, single-cylinder Derbi was no match for the 10-speed Suzuki twin.
Sheene’s first international victory won him an envelope stuffed with thousand peseta notes. Three days later, he was back in Barcelona, setting up camp in Montjuic Park. “Most of the crowd had come expecting to see Nieto thrash the opposition out of sight. The name ‘Sheene’ meant practically nothing to them,” said Barry. “Well, I had a shock for Ángel! In practice, I was only half a second down on him. Under the latest FIM Grand Prix rules, the Suzuki had to have the six-speed gearbox in place of the 10-speed, so Don Mackay and I put in a Dutch-made ’box.”
Three-quarters of the way through the race, Sheene took the lead from Simmonds and Nieto. Could he really win first time out on the world stage?
Not quite. The six-speed gearbox was under-geared. “I had to keep shutting off the motor on the fastest parts of the circuit. Otherwise I’m sure I could’ve won. Little Ángel got ahead of me and he went on to win by eight seconds. But I managed to finish 40 seconds in front of Bo Jansson, a seasoned GP regular.”
The same weekend, Sheene rode his 360cc Bultaco in the 500 race, won by MV Agusta’s Angelo Bergamonti, who lapped everyone up to third place, at least once. Sheene ran second, ahead of Kiwi Ginger Molloy’s Kawasaki H1R triple, until the little Bultaco cried ‘enough!’.
Sheene’s last appointment in Spain was yet another around-the-houses race, in the city of Zaragoza, 200 miles inland. This time he rested the Suzuki and rode his Bultaco, finishing second to Jansson’s Maico.
Now one thing led to another. The RT67 was brought out for the season-ending international at Brands Hatch, where he finished second to Simmonds’ Kawasaki, in spite of a broken throttle cable. Among the crowd that day were Suzuki GB sales boss Maurice Knight and team manager Rex White, who later visited the Sheene camp in the paddock.
The following week, the Sheenes visited Suzuki GB near Croydon to get their hands on another factory Suzuki. This was an XR05, based around the T500 twin road-bike engine, which had been built for the Daytona 200. The machine was in a bad way, following a big crash at the Ulster GP, so Frank and Barry volunteered to repair it, only charging Suzuki for parts, so long as they could race it.
The XR05 was a nail, but Sheene had made his first contact with a major manufacturer. In 1971, the 20-yearold and his four-year-old RT67 came within eight points of beating Nieto’s factory Derbi to the 125cc world title, and two years later he signed his first factory deal with Suzuki. He was on his way to the top of the world...
‘WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP EVENTS PAID LITTLE, SO SHEENE HAD ENTERED TWO NON-CHAMPIONSHIP MEETINGS IN SPAIN TO EARN SOME MONEY’